29 August 2013

Rabbi, Chaim Kanievsky, was asked what haredim should do regarding gas masks in light of the possible Syrian attack on Israel with chemical weapons.
Yeshiva World reports Kikar reports when asked if one should get on line for a gas mask in light of the imminent attack on Syria, Rav Chaim is quoted saying “gas masks, they are for Purim!”
The Gadol Hador is quoted instructing avreichim to continue their limud Torah and not to concern themselves with the ongoing events.

22 August 2013

While I agree that some Israeli women do dress inappropriately, there should be no place for violence, threats of terroristic behavior, and physical attacks on Israeli women, no matter how they dress!

“Dire Warning: It is forbidden to walk on our streets [Beit Shemesh] in immodest dress, including slutty clothing worn in a religious style. [signed] Residents of the neighborhood.”

"Some haredim in Beit Shemesh have taken a break from rioting to – illegally intimidate women.... Allison Kaplan Sommer reports that public health and new baby clinics in the city have been illegally plastered with a new modesty sign that reads, “Dire Warning: It is forbidden to walk on our streets in immodest dress, including slutty clothing worn in a religious style. [signed] Residents of the neighborhood.” (as reported in an online news site)

"One of the men greeted as a hero upon his return to the West Bank after being released from prison by Israel was responsible for murdering an American citizen, the Daily Beast reported Friday."
(as reported in the Algemeiner, link above)

15 August 2013

"Gur Hasidic Leader Orders Male Followers Not to Shake Hands With Other Men For Fear Of Sin ... Rabbi Abraham Benjamin Silberberg, the head of Gur’s Education Department, allegedly issued the order at a special meeting of Gur educators because handshakes and other normative incidental physical contact between men could lead to sin."

"[...] hasidic leader has allegedly ordered men not to hug, touch or shake hands with other men, the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv reported based on a report on a haredi blog"

Is this Normal, or What! I doubt that their new ruling will have any effect on this problem. It will only create more repression, which might produce the opposite unintended results.

*****

In a world that is governed, directed and lived according to the Torah's Halacha, why would this even be a topic?

I am perplexed as to why this is happening. married men and women are able to share intimacy with Kedusha, so why would either spouse need to wander into forbidden relationships? Has the value of intimacy been lost? Are men not in touch, in a healthy way, with their emotions?

There must be another reason that so many religious men have gone astray. Compare it to chicken pocks or diphtheria. Years ago it was rempant, attacking children. Then came immunization against many diseases threatening children.

Wikipedia has an interesting definition of inoculation (immunization) theory:

Inoculation hypothesis is defined as the idea that exposure to weak versions of a persuasive argument increases later resistance to that argument. To better explain this topic, in 1964 William McGuire came up with this: "Protecting a person's attitudes from persuasion is like inoculating the human body against disease".Inoculation hypothesis can be compared to an immunization. When the body is immunized against infection, a small dose of the particular strain is in the injection; this helps the body build a resistance to the infection.

Persuasion is closely related to inoculation hypothesis. Persuasion is a form of social influence. Persuasion guides people towards certain ideas or actions. According to Robert Cialdini, there are six "weapons of influence" when it comes to persuasion. They are, reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity.

Therefore, "persuasion" is the culprit. Persuasion is the underlying disease of perversion.

Too much separation berween male and female creates a distancing of healthy emotions that would naturally gravitate toward each other, but in such extreme distancing, the emotions might be (and seem to be) misdirected to a placebo.* A placebo of persuasion: if I cannot get what I want/need one way, I will search for it another way. The profound effect of this occurring early in one's life creates a dormant desire that will not die, because of the inner yetzer hara.

Therefore, this must be dealt with in youth before the age of 13, in order to reduce its effects in adulthood.

14 August 2013

After Kerry's recent pronouncement, "Netanyahu is not only concerned that the delegitimizationcampaign could hurt Israel’s economy through boycotts, “he is said to be even more worried that this campaign will erode Israel’s ability to defend itself,” according to Jeffrey Goldberg in Bloomberg."

The outcries are deafening and ongoing about including English and Math in Haredi schools, or even in after school programs. Minute inclusion of two subjects into the education of "boys" so that one day, if they choose, they will be able to train and seek a parnasah to support their future families.

11 August 2013

"When it came to comparisons with the Third Reich, it appears the first Klausenburger Rebbe had his priorities straight: In response to the Sunday report about the unrestrained attack by the visiting Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Halberstam, the Sanz-Klausenberger Rebbe of Borough Park (Grand Rebbe Attacks Settlers, Compares Israeli Media to Nazis), a local movement of pro-settlements Haredim known as Halamish (acronym for Haredim for Judea and Samaria) published considerably different statements on the same issues by Rabbi Halberstam’s father, the late Grand Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam, the First Klausenburger Rebbe and the author of “Shefa Chayim” and “Divrei Yatsiv.” A very nice lengthy article at Jewish Press link above, to set the record straight.There are still many other people who experienced the Holocaust, either personally or as a child of survivors, and they hold within alot of feelings about what they saw, experienced, and still live with.

Shame, Shame, Mudslinging only gets people full of dirt.

The Rebbe obviously feels a great deal for the Torahand for those who study the Torah,but this is not 1939and the situation is very, very different,as are the issues beingfought over.This hatred for the 'zionists' has got to be reshapedinto appreciation to HKB"Hfor enabling His children to return hometo Eretz Yisrael.HaShem wants all His children to return home

He wants them to be reconciledso the Geulah can finally be Here.

Grand Rebbe Attacks Settlers, Compares Israeli Media to Nazis The Sanz-Klausenberger Rebbe sees no difference between Nazi depictions of Jews as contaminators of German blood and the Israeli Media view of Haredim as freeloaders. The Jewish Press

Emotional Reactions to the Above:

What really happened in Bergen Belsen? This:

[T]he Satmar Rebbe survived Bergen-Belsen because he and his entourage were passengers on Kasztner's Train (more here), the Zionist-organized rescue of almost 1800 Hungarian Jews negotiated with Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi in charge of the Final Solution.

Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum The train was diverted to Bergen-Belsen by Adolph Eichmann and its passengers were held there as Eichmann waited to see if the Jewish Agency could come up with additional ransom meant to save other Jews.

The Kasztner hostages – who had marginally better conditions than other prisoners – were released on Eichmann's orders, 318 after about one month and the remainder after close to five months. All were taken to safety in Switzerland.

After the War, when Kaszter was libeled and the government of Israel sued in support of Kasztner, The Satmar Rebbe was asked to testify on Kaszter's behalf. The Satmar Rebbe allegedly replied, "I was saved by God, not by Zionists."

The Rebbe – who had ordered his hasidim to stay in Hungary and who steadfastly refused to believe the Nazis would harm Hungary's anti-Zionist Jews, fled Nazi-controlled Europe with the help of the Zionists he so vilified, leaving his followers to burn in Auschwitz.

***

"....." - you are whitewashing the ugly behavior of a man who never showed any remorse for his behavior, and who falsely blamed the very people who had rescued him for the fact that his own advice to his followers trapped them into a Europe which was an extermination machine. Rather than confront his guilt and blame his own actions, the Satmar Rebbe blamed others. He chose the path of a coward, and for that he deserved not to sleep well at night. Shame on him.

***

"Is Torah just for studying or is it to teach you how to DO? Many of us religious Zionists made aliyah so we could do the mitzvot where they were intended to be done, in Eretz Israel. Hashem gave us Israel to live in, not to criticize it or the people living in it."

***

"this is very sad. I see very big Rabbanim speaking loshon horah and motze sham rah about their fellow Jews to the media. may[be] this is all part of the time before Moshiach comes. I can not come up with a better explanation, as these Rabbanim should know not to speak this way."

***

"The Sanz-Klausenberger Rebbe sounds, how would I put it, like a desperate lost man. ... Jews should look for what they have in common not what is different about various groups of Jews. We are one small people in the world with real enemies and do not need to be finding stupid reasons to hate each other."

Why doesn't the Rebbe scold Prime Minister Netanyahu, for not knowing what the Torah says about cherishing our Homeland, building it up, chasing out the idolators ....

"I am not religious, but I respect all people,” she told the Dossim website, which contacted her following the Facebook post. “I know that hareidim are forbidden from sitting next to a woman or standing close to her on the street, so why should I go and bother them in the matters that are forbidden to them?... How can you talk about peace when people fight each other in such a dirty way?”

08 August 2013

Treif Food“We offered Netanyahu and his retinue kosher food, but they refused it,” the community officials told Arutz Sheva." Treif Decision"Two months after the visit by Netanyahu and his ministers, members of the community told Arutz Sheva that Netanyahu's eating non-kosher was perhaps the death blow to their efforts to prevent the Polish government from banning shechita, Jewish ritual slaughter – an effort that failed, when the government in Warsaw several weeks ago banned Jewish and Muslim ritual slaughter."Treif Policy"We are in a daily fight to ensure that Jews in this country can live a Jewish life. Only recently the government and courts here banned shechita. We would have expected Netanyahu to eat kosher and to impress upon the Poles how important keeping kosher is to Jews. How could he do such a thing when we were battling to be allowed to continue to produce kosher meat here?"

Top U.S. officials are reviewing the threat of a terrorist attack that has led to the weekend closure of 21 U.S. embassies and consulates in the Muslim world and a global travel warning to Americans, according to the Associated PressSource: Arutz Sheva

The terror threat prompting the U.S. government to close nearly two dozen embassies and consulates Sunday is the most specific, credible threat information in years, CBS News senior correspondent John Miller reports.Intelligence officers have reporting from a reliable source that a major plot is under way and that the team to carry it out has been selected and is in place, Miller reports.The threat information has been described as the most specific and credible since the foiled plot to blow up British planes en route to the United States in 2006, Miller reports. The specificity ends there.

According to Kochav Ha'ir, a website that carries news from the port city of Ashdod, a Sudanese man is suspected of raping a 5-year-old boy in the men's room in the local Simol mall.

According to police reports, Sudanese and Eritrean illegal immigrants are involved in a disproportionately high number of crimes, including sexual crimes. The latest attack by Eritreans against Jews took place in Tel Aviv eight days ago, when a group of Eritreans pulled a Jew out of his car for no known reason and beat him unconscious in front of his wife and children.Arutz Sheva"Government of Israel, you need to begin to work very strongly in order to return the Sudanese and Eritreans to their lands. They are destroying every good plot and destroying the daughters of Israel mentally and physically - the daughters of Israel are not hefker! We do not lack trouble to add trouble to trouble!"

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Ein Od Milvado

LIVING in Eretz Israel is the equivalent of all the Mitzvot of the Torah (Sifri, Parashat Re'eh, TOSEFTA, AVODA ZARA 5:2)

Fortunate is he who merits in his life to FIX HIS RESIDENCE in Eretz HaKodesh (Zohar Hakadosh Iii 72b) and remove from your heart this false belief that a man has more blessings outside the land (Alshich Hakadosh, Ki Tavo 28:6)